


Hiraeth

by FauxPause



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Because healing takes time, Blood and Violence, Body Dysphoria, Character Death, Come Yell at or Fight Me in the Comments, Coping with Humor, Except for Keith he's post whale, Gun Violence, Happy Ending, Healing, Keith (Voltron) Has Abandonment Issues, Lack of Communication, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) Has Self-Esteem Issues, Lance (Voltron) Has Trust Issues, Langst, Lotor is the character death, M/M, MFE fighter squad, Major Character Injury, Mental Anguish, Miscommunication, Multi, No Time Skip, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Concussion Syndrome, Pre-Time Skip, Slow Burn, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Tags May Change, Trust Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence, author using formatting for drama and funsies, but we'll get them there, the kids aren't alright
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:35:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FauxPause/pseuds/FauxPause
Summary: "A homesickness for a home you can never return to or that never was"AU Set before Lotor's Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal wherein the Kuron program is trigged slightly too early and Lance is alone in the room when it happens.
Relationships: Allura & Romelle (Voltron), Hunk & Pidge | Katie Holt, Keith & Krolia (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron), TBD - Relationship
Comments: 14
Kudos: 75





	1. A Mess

**Author's Note:**

> Short AU where I give up on the pretense that I’m not actually horribly mean to Lance in all of my fics and just fucking go for it outright. Welcome to the mess the pandemic has made of my nerves. Suffer well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a rough time. I've dropped all my usual pretense about how mean I am to Lance. Everyone in this is in for a rough ride. Mind the tags but it won't really be as rough as they make it out to be.
> 
> Edits will be made and, yes, there are more chapters.
> 
> Note: Kuron is referred to as 'Shiro' in this chapter because at this point no one has any clue as to what's going on.

He’s not stopping.

“L-listen to me! Hey-”

A sharp ringing noise almost cancels out the stomach-dropping impact. 

_Thud_. _Thud. Thud._

“ _-Hey!_ ” He shouts again, sharper. Louder. Voice stretching and cracking like the wall behind him as he desperately throws himself out of the way once more.

Something twinges in the other. In his fingers, maybe. In the half second between the wind up and the strike. 

He gets a breath. He takes it. 

Purple light sears into being. The twinge that maybe had been absolutely wasn’t. 

(He took too much.) 

Lance curses himself and his needy lungs as he scrambles to change a desperate dive into a survivable roll across the unforgiving floor. 

All that time, all the time not spent alone in the dark, in front of a game he’d dove into public fountain water to retrieve, to play with a _friend_ , has been in the training room. Has been with Allura or the programs, running drills and fighting drones and droids. 

All that time was _worth it._

Worth the ache of being left out and alone and pushing it because _holy crow_ Shiro is _fast_ and he can hear the eerie _buzz_ the missed strikes are leaving in his scrambling wake and he _does not want to get hit by that_. He’s got the blaster form up but he’s scattering the shots. Clipping them close, near feet and toes and the edges of that poof of hair but nothing grazing and-

Lance can’t beat Shiro. 

(He knows that.)

Can’t stop him and _he’s_ not stopping. Talking isn’t helping and _cheese and crackers_ the arm is _lit up._

There’s a ringing in his ears. He’s going to die here. He’s going to die and it’s not going to be in space, in Red or Blue or Voltron or in his bed at home. 

Shiro is _silent_ and stalking forward and Lance’s breath heaves ragged in his lungs, whistling and wheezing and waiting. 

Because he’s got another breath.

Because Shiro is stalking, not running. Not chasing or clashing. Shiro hardly even looks like he’s breathing. His wrists neatly in line with his twisting hips, _stalking towards him_ like it's a game and Lance is barely a named object to bash for loot. 

Lance can’t beat Shiro. Not in a fight. 

But Shiro, _if that’s even him_ , isn’t acting like this is a fight. 

His lungs finally remember what they’re for. His fingers twitch. 

(Paranoid habit coming through in the clutch and if anyone had noticed how he’d religiously kept his bayard, blue, now red, on his person after the airlock he’d never be able to tease Keith about his knife again. Not that he could now. That’d require Keith to stick around long enough to, you know, tease.)

Lance shoots him. 

Just once, right in the knee. Clean through and through. It drops the older paladin. It can’t hold the older’s forward weight and Lance knew it wouldn’t be able to _that’s why he did it_ and it would be fine. 

It would be fine, because they had the healing pods and they’d fixed worse. ( _his back_ ). So it’s not a big deal, not when Shiro apparently was pulling out the _galra murder-hand_ and-

The room spins. 

(No, wait, that’s him.)

Spinning and dropping, hitting the floor before throwing himself away from- from-

From Hunk.

Hunk hit him. 

(Blindsided him. He must just see Shiro down, Lance blaster in hand. But he _hit him_ first and didn’t _say anything_ and they don’t even do that to the _galra_ what the _heck Hunk?!_ )

Lance hits the floor, room spinning, and throws himself away. From Hunk, from probably-not-Shiro’s crunched body, from Pidge’s kicking feet as she makes her way towards-

He screams.

Tries to warn her off. 

Tries to get her to _stay back_ and _get away_ and _Pidge, Pidge! It’s not Shiro!_

Somehow they don’t hear him. Not under - 

“ _Hunk, he’s lost it”_

_-_ It disappears under -

_“Pidge, he_ shot me _I know it’s tough but could you”_

_-_ it doesn’t _matter_ when the flash of Hunk’s Bayard shifting almost distracts him from the poison-green coil of Pidge’s weapon shooting towards him. 

There’s a roaring in his ears that has nothing to do with lions.

He has a breath. 

(He takes it.)

Hunk falls. 

(He puts the shot through Hunk’s shoulder. As clean and quick as the shot through Shiro’s knee. Neat and precise and _easy_ , so, so easy. 

Breathe in, _pow_ , exhale. 

All one breath.)

The Yellow bayard dissolves in sparkles as Hunk’s good arm flies uselessly to the injury. It’s done. The Yellow Bayard, the Yellow Paladin, doesn’t have a second form. He can’t heft the weight of Yellow's machine gun with a hole in his shoulder half the size of his palm.

(He did it.)

There’s a roaring in his ears, and he thinks maybe it actually is-

Pidge. 

(She screams.)

She screams and she yells and her Bayard goes a brilliant, sparking, green. 

(But she’s hit him with that before. She’s hit him before. 

Fool him once, and all that.)

It goes wide when he knocks her elbow, arm still and strong like he’s holding the sword he doesn’t think they know he has. And then, summoned by the thought, it’s in his hand. The green Bayard clatters to the ground even as he feels the blaster in his hand finish the shift. 

The hilt of the sword they haven’t asked after- 

and Allura hasn’t shared and Lance hasn’t told because _no one has noticed_

-slams into her temple. She hits the ground and skids, eyes struggling to focus.

He takes a breath.

He doesn’t have it. 

Doesn’t have time to close his mouth, catch that breath, look back at where he thinks Pidge, or maybe Hunk, is crawling towards the other. Doesn’t have time to _think_ because, impossibly, Shiro is on him. 

(Lance can’t help but look down with the time he doesn’t have. It’s there. The hole. Or, rather, most of Shiro’s knee _isn’t_.)

One beat. _Thud_. Two. _Thud_.

(How is he _moving_?)

The eerie buzz is back but it's the crash of metal against metal that sets his teeth ringing through his skull.

He didn’t have to think, didn't have to do anything but _move_ and get the flat between Shiro’s knuckles and himself. Sparks rip off the back of the blade, off the diamond points of purple knuckles, once, twice-

Something hooks the back of Lance’s ankle. Yanks.

His stomach crashes through the floor. The rush of _gravity_ and _God’s laws_ and unutterable sensation of _panic_ rip through him as blood beads down the edge of the broadsword as it’s yanked to the side in Shiro’s free, flesh, hand. 

Shiro is _taller_ , _broader_ , _older_ and _meaner_ and lived, Lance doesn’t even have time to think, through an arena of challengers all more so than he was when he went in. 

But Lance is more flexible, more ready to _move_ than to _think_ so he falls into the drop. Lets the rest of his core catch up to the swooping sensation in his stomach. Feels the stretch in his thighs and his core as he controls the fall and-

Shiro is _faster_. 

(Lance is slower.)

A quicksilver flash of _purple_ in the edge of his vision. Something grabs his face and _pulls_.

Lance screams.

He _burns_. A flash-sear that presses further the harder he struggles. And he does struggle. 

(He can’t beat Shiro in a fight)

He fights against the grip with everything he has. Squirms and screams and scrabbles even as the ceaseless _pulling_ drags him upright by his face. 

(Wriggles, like a fish on a hook. And he knows, the harder the fish fights the deeper the hook lodges. He can feel it now, pressing against the corner of his mouth. Searing, burning, _branding_.) 

He presses, uselessly, against Shiro's chest with his empty hand. Smacks at the Black paladins’ throat, reaches for his 

(glowing, glowing, glowing gold, glowing purple, _glowing glowing glowing_ )

eyes with outstretched fingers falling just short. Bare tips brushing smile lines that etch deeper with every _press_ into his face. 

(He can feel his fingers spasm uselessly around the Red bayard’s hilt. Feels Shiro’s flesh hand, the human hand, force his wrist backwards. Feels him ignore the bite of the blade, forcing it out and away from them both.

There’s _nothing_ in his ears. He can’t _hear_ , can’t _breathe_ , can’t-)

Something sizzles. Something wet gives way to steam and Lance, with what little he has left, hopes, oh he _hopes_ , it’s just tears. ( _Please_ let it be tears and not-)

He screams. Shouts. 

Begs.

It’s not enough.

(He thinks he sees Hunk move. Thinks he sees Pidge shift towards them. Thinks, desperately, around the tears streaming down his face, through the blood popping and dripping and wetting his screams, that there’s a white flash beyond the consuming purple glow eating his vision alive.) 

(He thinks he imagines it.) 

He’s not enough. 

Shiro grins. Kind edges sharp, hungry. It wears well on that familiar face. It's not even a surprise, not really. Even if it's relatively new, he’s seen it before. The anger, the loathing. 

(Lance has seen this before. Boxed away better, maybe, but he’s seen it.) 

It’s not enough, but it’s something. 

The hungry cruelty distracts Shiro. 

He doesn’t notice the weight of the sword disappearing under his bloody grip. Doesn’t notice it flash back into existence between Lance’s hands, between their bodies. 

He sure notices as the blade shears through his shoulder. 

A shudder races through Lance’s shaking arms, the angle all wrong. The blade drags, scrapes, cuts across what Lance weakly realizes is probably bone, before flying free.

(It happens in a tick.)

Shiro’s right arm, most of his shoulder, slides to the ground with a wet gush and a metallic crash. 

(It feels like it takes years.)

Gold eyes go _wide_ , the savage grin slipping away into a gaping maw. Lance heaves in air and shoves. Watches Shiro hit the floor near his severed limb in a detached haze. 

(It hurts. It _hurts_. He can’t - can’t hear anything. Everything is-)

When Lotor strides through the door, Lance just shoots him. 

(It’s been a day, alright?)

One shot, right through the gap in the armor. Between neck and chin and if the Prince didn’t walk around with his nose in the air all the quiznacking time he’d never be able to make the shot. 

But he does. Oh, he does. 

He’s feeling a lot of somethings and he’s really still not sure 

(not even after all the form changes, the gun to the sword to the sniper to the new, old, familiar-achy form of the pistol in his palms. Smaller and familiar and the thrum of it in his grip feels like security. Feels like coming home) 

how the bayards work but he was sure that a single shot had never, well, _exploded_ like that before. 

(He doesn’t track the arcing bounce of Lotor’s head. Silver hair fanning against the ground.

Doesn’t look at Shiro’s arm.

Breathes through his mouth. Doesn’t taste the iron, wet, moist, slide along his sore throat. Doesn’t touch the edge of his lips with a trembling tongue. Doesn’t stop long, long, long before he could _taste_ the smell coming from the corner of his own mouth--)

His face aches. He rolls his mouth, not tasting the swallow, and immediately winces, slowly easing back into the thoughtless slack-lipped pose he’d fallen into at some point in the mess. 

Everything aches, really, but it's easier, as it always is, to worry about his face than the hollow _lub-dub_ aching somewhere under his breast. His face is what matters in the end, after all. Right?

(His eye stings. He tries not to think about if the sluggish wet feeling he’s ignoring is blood or tears or something else. He can’t blink. The smell is—)

There are little whorls seared into him now. He can feel them _pulling_. Lance doesn’t want to know if they match the flesh hand. Doesn’t know if that would be better or worse than knowing he had something else _burned into his face_. 

The door opens again. 

The fine mist of blood is just settling, dropping lazily out of the air. 

Allura’s eyes go wide.

* * *

Upon reflection, they both react poorly. 

* * *

He doesn’t shoot Allura. 

As the blue Bayard wraps around his throat (awkward - it was his, once) he has the shockingly cold, coherent, and crystal clear thought that he should have. 

It's the first clean thought in his head in what feels like hours. 

_I should have shot her_. 

He thinks he should be nauseous. That the thought should be repulsive. Should be _something_. But he’s just... tired. 

He watches his hands strain against the corded light, watches them tremble, shake, like they belong to someone else. There’s a faint ache somewhere around his chest. In his wrists and shoulders. 

He knows he’s pulling as much as he’s capable, maybe more - adrenalin is a hell of a drug, _out_ and _away_ and a swirling, thudding, _please, please, no, not my face, it hurts - it hurts it hurts it hurts_ and then-

“What the _quiznack_ -”

(We really, Lance thinks in the dim haze, need to lock our doors.)

“- is going on?”

-the door opens. 

Lance stares.

Allura stares.

Keith stares back. 

He stares at Hunk, knocked out with a hole clean through and through his armor. 

Pidge concussed and on the floor near Hunk, vomiting and shaking.

Lotor, hardly recognizable, what with his head and shoulders being on opposite sides of the room.

Shiro down an arm, down most of his _right side_ , and bleeding into a wide puddle on the floor. Enough of it that Keith almost misses that he’s also been _shot_. Might have not noticed at all but for the jarring hole where his brother’s knee _should be_ and there, in the middle of it all, is Lance.

Bloodied, bruised, and burned. A red mark that looks chillingly like _fingers_ curing across the side of his jaw and down the back of his neck. The damage illuminated by the glow of Allura’s whip where it wraps around his straining, shuddering, hands. 

The horror that wells up in him almost throttles him. Almost succeeds in throttling _Lance_ because **_what has he done_ ** except - 

Shiro sits up. 

(Allura’s bayard shatters with a chime. Sparkles flashing bright but not as bright as-)

Blood pours from the wound where his shoulder ought to be. But it’s not the red against monochrome armor that flips his stomach, it's the gold glow spilling out of his brother’s eyes. 

Allura gasps and somewhere he thinks he hears Lance curse, actually, really curse, and all of it is secondary because a purple blaster bolt skims over the top of Shiro’s _remaining shoulder_ and he has to do something. 

Now. 

Before they all succeed in killing each other. 

(Because he heard Allura’s bayard shatter, which means-)

Lance is _free_ and he-

“Shi-”

Another bolt flies through the air, blue and bright enough to burn spots into life every time Keith blinks. It scores the ground between him and Shiro, searing the floor black and cracking the tiles around it. Keith raises an arm against the wash of air that whips in the shot’s wake, squints through the smoke. 

Shiro, at least he thinks it's Shiro, collapses back to the ground. Krolia hovering over his body not a second later.

“No, no, no," 

Lance’s voice is small, hoarse enough that it’s been shrunk to a whisper. Thin and reedy, cracking more with each repetition.

There’s a flash and a retching noise. 

He’s pretty sure Hunk just threw up. 

Lance hasn't stopped. “Keith, don’t- it’s- not Sh-”

He has no idea what's happened. He takes in the room, trying to figure out where to even _start_. 

Romelle is staring at the blood, skin somewhere between white and green even as Allura stares in confused horror between the blonde’s ears and Lotor’s severed head. 

Keith turns, stomach roiling, trying to get a better look at the whole room at once because-

They’re in _pieces_. 

What happened? How did this happen? This isn’t close to what he expected. It's not even in spitting distance of what he remembers leaving and Lance.

Lance is in hysterics, Keith realizes. He scrambles to grab sharp elbows as Lance wavers wildly on his feet, sliding towards the floor.

He’s in hysterics and his eye is, it’s dripping some awful combination of fluid, the bottom part of it looks wrong, looks _cooked_ and he has a horrible thought about eggs for all of a tick and then the only thing under his hands is the chilled front of the healing pod. 

He doesn’t know when he moved.

Allura looks up at him, her own hand pressed over a pod with Hunk’s frosty visage within it. 

“GOOD RASHORHOMPING VILLATRISKETS! WHAT IN GAZARVOROG HAPPENED!?”

  
He’s never been so grateful to hear Coran’s voice in his _life_.


	2. Jokes On You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knock knock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I did hit Pidge in the head. Shot Hunk very close to the opposite side of where a human heart rests. And, of course, cut off Shiro’s right arm. Symbolsim? Don't know 'im.
> 
> Also, let me know what you think of the spacing - thus far it's been a complete accident on import but I think it's growing on me for this fic.

Three pods hum away under the floor. Hunk, Lance, and Shiro ensconced within. 

The last had been a struggle. 

He’d expected to have to fight Krolia about it, well aware of the Blade’s opinion on acceptable losses. But it had been Allura who’d looked at Shiro’s lopsided (for now, Keith reminded himself) form and moved to finish the job. 

How Shiro had lost that arm, though, was a different story entirely. 

It looked like it had been hacked away. It hadn’t, he swallowed back the rising mix of anger and bile, been _ripped_ _off_ with brute strength - the edges too clean for a tear. But the wound was too bloody for an energy blast. So it had been cut.

The only person with a blade was Lotor. 

Keith looked over the too clean, too white walls of the hallway as he walked towards the strangely oval room Allura had pointed him towards, brain spinning through possibilities. 

(He didn’t remember them having a makeshift medbay. The princess had shrugged, said it’d become necessary. They couldn’t use the pods for every little scrape.)

(There was something there. Something in the way she half-winced at her own words before she turned back to Romelle.) 

The room had been in shambles. Still was, if he was being honest. He couldn’t make heads or tails of what had happened and with the severity of the injuries it wasn’t like they’d stopped to ask questions. 

Had he been too late? Had the prince already turned on the paladins? 

Had he found out about the colony’s rebellion, seen an alarm from his laboratory, and decided the con was up? 

(The door wooshed open. Still weird after being on the whale. Proper walls were weird in general, after living in a hut again.) 

Was it him that struck Pidge into the dizzy complacency that had her leaning into Coran’s medicine-cool palms and buzzing machines? 

Turned on Shiro and- and- quintessenced him into some weird homicidal fugue? 

Space magic was _weird_ . And some of it, he remembered with another sick lurch, was powered by _people's unwilling life essence_. He really wasn’t going to leave anything off the table. Hell, the _ship_ had tried to kill them once for christ sake! 

...But it didn’t explain the fist sized hole in Hunk’s shoulder. 

He takes a moment to humor the idea that Lance had taken that shot. That Lance had missed. 

The scenario unspooled in his mind. Lotor holding Hunk hostage, sword at the larger boy’s throat. Lance stalling until he can take the shot, being tricked into hitting his best friend before...

Keith shakes his head, grimacing as his hair smacks into his face. 

It rings false, his every sense pinging away from the idea. 

So if not that, then _how_. How had _Hunk_ ended up with a hole in his shoulder? Who shot him? Had _Lance_ hit the other before or after blowing out Shiro’s knee?

(That Lance was the one to shoot Shiro’s knee out wasn’t even a question. He was the only one who’d think about going for someone’s legs like that. The only one who’d take such a risky shot, bargaining the pay off against mass consequences. And, Keith turned the thought over reluctantly, the only one in the room, on the ship, with the _ability_ to make that kind of wound.) 

And Allura hadn't known, either. Had her bayard wrapped around Lance's _throat_ when they'd arrived and hadn't stopped, hadn't looked at all like she'd even consider stopping, until Shiro had staggered upright like the antagonist of a horror film. 

Keith scowled at the wall, careful to keep his thoughts to himself. He didn’t have enough facts. He eyed Pidge for a second before looking away. Her pupils were still two different sizes despite Coran’s fiddling with the altean box-thing. He wasn’t going to _get any facts_ until she was put to rights either. 

“Coran,” he starts. He doesn’t finish. The ginger altean whips around, ignoring the way Pidge sways violently to the side before self correcting, with a shout. 

“Number-” He breaks off, shouted word ringing in all their ears, to look Kieth over from head to toe. Pidge groans pitifully, shaky hands reaching up to clutch at their head. “-well, I suppose that throws a wrench into things doesn’t it former number four?” 

Keith resists the urge to snarl, fingers itching to grab the bridge of his nose to stave off the headache he can feel lurking around the next conversation. 

“Can’t you just use my _na-_ ”

“Ah! Right! You must be wondering about the Black Lion!”

“Wh-” No, no he wasn’t. That wasn’t even _close_ to what he was ‘wondering’ but now that Coran had said it, “What _about_ the Black Lion?” 

What the hell could the Lions have to do with any of this? God he didn’t even _want to know_. How much worse could this get?

Coran pulled at his mustache. “I won’t shy from it, former number four, the Black Lion has taken heavy damage.” 

What? _How_. When? What could have-

“We’re lucky the bay held up as well as it did! Had they gone at it any longer, we might have all been food for the zegulmorphs!” 

Coran was always a source of questions. _Who_ had gone at _what_ and food for the _why?_

“I, too, was shocked! Why it reminds me of the time Alfor and I were on-”

“Coran!” Ah, hell. That’d been sharper than he’d meant but- “Short version. Start from the beginning.” 

Whether it was the tone or the question Keith watched as something sharp flashed across the usually jovial altean’s face. His shoulders squared and settled, voice revealing none of the hard emotion Keith half thought he’d imagined. 

“The Red Lion attacked the Black.”

_What._

The altean nodded as though Keith had said that aloud which, given his day, was possible. 

“Most of the bay is in mass disrepair. The walls between the Blue, Red, and Black bay are all but gone. There’s scoring across most of the floor and nearly all the loading pallets are crushed.” Coran ticked more bits of bad news off his fingers in a nonsensical order. “The Black Lion suffered it with admirable restraint, until the tail canon came out. At which point-”

For fucks sake, it sounds like they’re lucky they weren’t all spaced. Just what he needed, homicidal _Lions_ to even out-

"-then the Red Lion’s jaw blade activated and I had to run for it!” 

Keith sputtered, torn from his thoughts. “What? You just - took off?” 

Coran scowled back at him, mustache bristling like a living creature. “The Black Lion slammed the Red into the East wall! It was either make it out the door or-”

Or get squished under who knows how many tonnes of metallic semi-sentient war machine. Coran wasn’t a paladin. It wasn’t like he’d be able to- to calm the lions or something. Keith’s eyes traced over the door. A _lot more_ sentient than he’d thought, if Red was up and outright going after Black’s throat.

Shiro’s eyes glowing gold. The Black Lion moving. Respective paladins critically injured at the same time. 

It couldn’t be a coincidence. 

Coran didn’t seem to think so either, and he’d insinuated that Red had _started it_ which-

The old altean turned his back to Keith, casually tugging Pidge back upright and setting the boxy contraption spinning around her head and his hands. 

“I don’t think the Red Lion took well to a Black Paladin attacking their own.” Coran’s voice dropped, the closest to a whisper Keith had heard from the man. “Not again.” 

Keith’s stomach sank somehow lower. It usually did, when he thought about his and Shiro’s predecessor. 

_Zarkon_. 

Zarkon and _Alfor,_ he remembered with a jolt. The Black and Red Paladins and, oh, Lance always _had_ been the old altean’s favorite. The only one of them who’s name it seemed the ginger man bothered to remember. 

_He’s taking_ , that nasty voice in the back of his skull hissed, _a very long time to handle Pidge’s headwound._

“Coran,” Keith said. “He’s going to be alright.”

The soundless voice hissed, grating against his instincts as he laid an open palm on the altean’s shoulder. 

The box hummed in Coran’s hands. Pidge let out a relieved sigh.

Strong arms wrapped around him, unforgiving as steel, and crushed him to the giant altean’s chest. Keith awkwardly patted at what his trapped hands could reach, wincing out of the way of the far-too-alive mustache as it quivered and shook along with its owner. 

They were going to make it through this. All of them. Even if he had to drag them himself. 

* * *

“Pidge is going to be fine.”

Krolia looked up from her gun, which was in an alarming number of pieces before her. 

“That’s the green one.” It wasn’t a question but he nodded all the same, smile tugging at his lips as she simply nodded back. Even after the years on the whale it was still just as nice to know that this was another thing he shared with her. Something else he’d gotten from his _mom._

The bridge was shockingly clean, considering it hadn’t been much more than an hour after, well, after everything. Krolia snapped a part of the blaster back together with a satisfying _click._

“I took care of removing the Prince.” She gestured towards the far fainter stain on the floor. “It seemed like it was upsetting the alteans.” 

Yeah, he bet. Speaking of which, Keith scanned the room for the long eared girls. Krolia waited until his gaze returned to her to shake her head. “They headed for some sort of laboratory.”

Keith felt an eyebrow raise all on its own. A laboratory and Krolia _hadn’t_ followed them? 

Familiar purple eyes, it’d been three years now and he didn’t think he was _ever_ going to get over how odd-wonderful-bizarre it was to see that shade in another person’s eyes, stare laconically through him. 

“Think I’ve seen enough of quintessence experiments for a long while.”

Ah. Right. If her research post hadn’t managed it then the disgusting horrors of the so called ‘colony’ had done it for good. 

“They’ll be fine.” 

Krolia nodded, fiddling with, hell, Keith had no idea. Guns weren’t his area. He could pull a trigger if he had to, but, really, he just left it up to-

“Of course. Besides, Romelle is quite self sufficient. She can make her way back to us if necessary.” 

_If necessa_ \- “Kroila.” Keith says. “Allura is not going to attack Romelle.” 

Krolia hummed. 

“ _Mom_. Seriously, I know that was,” _a fucking mess,_ he doesn’t say. “Wasn’t the best introduction but they’re not like that.” 

Purple eyes flick up towards him, a small smile curling the edges of her mouth. Same as they always do when he slips with the endearment. 

“She did,” Krolia says, with an empathizing _click_ of blaster parts coming together, “attempt to finish off your brother.”

(It's a testament to his patience and the long span of time they’ve spent together that she doesn’t hesitate over calling Shiro his brother. His sibling in all but blood. It wasn’t always like that. The idea that his dad might’ve- that Ryuu had possibly left behind _two_ children, hadn’t insulted her so much as the idea seemed to just _hurt_.) 

It takes Keith a moment to respond. Memories of sadistic training droids, aggressive food stations, the needlessly complicated layout of not just the castle of lions but of Romelle’s strange little colony as well as the girl’s unbending resolve to _assassinate_ a prince the rest of her people were essentially in love with. 

“She’s altean.” He says, finally. 

Korlia tilts her head. Considers his explanation. Nods. 

* * *

“You sure you’re up for this?”

Pidge scowls up at him, elbow deep in a before unremarkable floor panel. “Of course I’m up for it!” 

Keith glances to the side, relieved to see Coran hovering with an array of medical looking boxes. Pidge follows the flicker of his eyes and scowls deeper. 

(He’d call it a pout except, you know, he needed her to play the damn security footage. And he valued his kneecaps. He saw what she did to Lance when he teased her, he wasn’t _stupid._ ) 

She twists two wires together with unnecessary gusto before slouching back to drag her laptop closer. 

(She isn’t allowed to walk just yet. But sitting on the floor with her laptop screen as muted as she can make it for a handful of minutes should be fine. Taking it away from her once she was done, though, that was going to be the real trick. He knew electronics and concussions didn’t mix. He also knew he was gonna delegate _that_ task to Coran and his alien strength, no two ways about it.) 

A few clicks later the lights go out. 

“Pidge.”

(Oh, hell. That was him. That _tone_ . That was, God, he sounds like _Adam_ . Shiro was going to make _so much fun_ of him when-) 

“Psssh,” She scoffs, rapid clacking belaying the laugh in her voice. The overhead lights don’t come back on, but there’s a beat before the auxiliary lamps flicker on and a ball of blue light pulses into existence in the center of the command circle. 

Pidge clacks away for a few more seconds before, “Ha!”, the ball pulses again and bursts into tiny dots of confetti. The confetti swirls for a tick before streaming out in glowing lines. Two silhouettes slowly sketching out until the details bead in and smooth out. Until Shiro is standing near the center of an almost empty room. 

The door, closed in reality and dark against the bright projection, is open. As if someone had just passed through it. 

The only other figure in the room is Lance. Shiro’s right hand is outstretched, mouth open, smile lines crinkled around his eyes.

“Lance,” Shiro’s voice, echoing and distant, says. “Wait up a minute.”

They watch him slow to a halt. Lance half turning towards him, feet away from the exit. 

“Sure.” The same, far away tinge is in Lance’s recorded voice too. “What’s u-”

The lights flare on, bright and almost blinding. Unexpected but not nearly as so as the view screen flaring to life. 

“Hellooooo!” 

A woman with a long, Keith blinks. It’s _not_ a ponytail. It’s some sort of tentacle? Montrail? He wasn’t sure what the term was but it was the same red-orange color as the majority of her patchwork skin. She looked familiar, something about her pricking at him. 

“Ezor,”

Lilac skin but it’s the _suit_ that catches his attention. 

“ _You!_ ” 

“Oh? You two _know_ each other?” The not-ponytailed, _Ezor_ , giggled. “Wow! What’s the stooory? C’mon, Axca, you didn’t tell us you had a paladin _boyfri_ -” 

“Where is Prince Lotor?” Axca, the galra from the scalruite all those years ago and probably just weeks to her, questions. “We’ve come to negotiate our surrender...” Her eyes flit over towards Allura pointedly before widening in shock. 

“Forget Lotor,” a third figure squashes into sight, massive bulk nearly launching the other two women out of frame. “Who’s _that_.” The words are a low growl and Keith spins, only now realizing that they can _see them too_ which means-

“Is that an _altean?_ ” The cloying voice of the first woman, _Lotor’s Generals_ he remembers now, goes sickeningly sweet. “Oh, wow.” She says, voice falling just flat enough to be noticeable. “Lotor must be _so excited._ ” Her gaze, toxic and sharp pupiled, flickers over Krolia and Keith before sticking on Allura. “Where’d you find her?”

-Romelle is visible. 

He doesn’t know what tips him off. Doesn’t know how to explain the rising shiver through his core, the way his hair stands on end in a sweeping wave from his toes to his head. He just _knows_ -

“Allura! Shields!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on Canon and the differences herein:  
> Remember that Haggar is the one who sends both the generals and activates Kuron in order to collect Lotor. Lotor convinces the generals after his conversation with Haggar to rejoin him / clears up the Narti situation. In canon that went so stupidly smoothly for the prince that I figured Axca had to have been working on bringing the other two around in the interim. 
> 
> Here, the Kuron protocol is activated just slightly before Keith arrives with his damning evidence (ie: Romelle) - but _even in canon_ the generals and the ships seemed very ready to go. While Lotor clearly designed the ships to form his monstrosity with him as a solo pilot, he also clearly planned for all of his generals, not just Axca, to return to his side in some form. That he was clearly prepared to betray them again doesn’t really affect that first assumption. 
> 
> So here Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid have been ordered by a (probably as close to frantic as she gets) Haggar to go figure out what’s going on with Lotor and, frankly, the rest of the paladins. Because I’ll level with you, I’m not sure Haggar, especially as emotionally unstable as she is now that she’s unearthing her original memories, would have anticipated the (seemingly) least competent Paladin having a hysterical break and taking out 2/5ths of Voltron along with her clone spy. She’s flying blind - so in go the Generals. (Who need a probable reason to double cross Haggar anyway so they were already packed). Okay, hope that clears things up!


	3. Think Fast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm playing fast and loose with canon, I'm aware. But canon played fast and loose with our feelings and expectations so…
> 
> **Repost as something went wonky on the first up load

“Allura! Shields!”

The princess dives forward, Keith’s warning seconds too slow. 

The castle rocks, thrusters overwhelmed by the attack, titling alarmingly into an axis drift. 

Pidge yelps as she slides across the floor, grunting as Coran snags her around the waist and hauls her into the air. Krolia has an arm in front of Romelle, the blonde trembling a little as two hungry grins and a set of pursed lips settle over the galran faces before them. 

The particle barrier snaps into place, too late to stop the claxons blaring and warnings spanning the rest of the command room’s large window like walls. 

“Aww, how cute! They think-”

Keith roars, trying to be heard over the alarms, “Someone _cut that the hell_ -” 

The screen goes dark with an electronic ‘ping!’. He sighs, shoulders falling again. “Thanks Pidge.”

The Green paladin nods from where she’s still dangling, half upside down in Coran’s grip, laptop clutched in one white knuckled hand. 

“The barrier won’t hold for long!”

Keith stared at Coran blankly for a moment. ‘Won't hold?’ _Won’t hold?_ What was the point of a shield that wouldn’t-

“We need to get to the Lio-”

“I’m sorry, Princess, but I don’t know if that will be possible.” Coran coughed, hoisting Pidge into a more secure carry. 

(The ginger altean ignored her scrambling and snarled demands.) 

“The Red and Black Lions,”

Keith groaned, grabbing the bridge of his nose. Of course. They were down; one, two, probably _three_ Lions. 

His eyes slide over to where Romelle was slapping at the controls, scrolling through altean text and gnawing on her lower lip. 

They can’t access Yellow without Hunk, but it wasn’t impossible for Lions to take on second paladins. Himself in Black, Lance in Red, Allura in Blue - of course he wasn’t sure that it meant any of them could go _back_ to their original Lions. 

(Lance couldn’t but that might not be accurate across the lions as a whole. Maybe Blue was just fickle. Maybe Lance wasn’t- Ugh, he didn’t have _time_ for this!) 

“We’re not going to know until we try. Allura, Romelle, let’s get to the bay and see what we can do. Pidge-”

“I’m coming with you!”

Keith looked questioningly over her head at Coran’s dismayed, and amusedly concerned, face. 

“Number Five-”

The castle shook with another impact, particle barrier flickering ominously. 

Keith made a choice. (He hoped he wouldn’t regret it.)

“Fine. Pidge, come here. I’ll help you get to the hanger. Coran, get the castle’s defenses up. Something is better than nothing, just try not to hit us. Allura, Romelle, go on ahead. See if you can’t get Blue and Yellow out.” 

Allura glanced between Keith and Romelle for less than a tick before taking the smaller altean’s elbow in hand. Romelle looked up and nodded. They bolted out the door, hair whipping behind them. 

Pidge scowled as, instead of lowering her to the floor, Coran expediently dropped her into Keith’s chest. They both flinched, each scrabbling for purchase before Keith resigned himself to holding her like a slightly less-chaotic Wolf*. 

Coran prodded the controls, muttering under his mustache about Romelle’s tinkering, and Keith’s last view of the control room was to a large expanse of option screens fluttering open. 

He ducked his head and ran. 

* * *

“Why didn’t we take the shoot?” 

Keith scowled and ignored her, focusing on the next corner. She knew damn well why they didn’t take the shoot. Between her head wound and the weird, crazy, finicky system Alfor had set up or some god forsaken reason neither of them could be sure the shoot was even a viable option. 

Better to run the length of the castle than risk getting stuck somewhere in its depths mid firefight. 

They were almost there. One more corner and-

Keith hauled Pidge closer as he braked into a sharp skid. He barely swerved out of Romelle’s way, calves and knees screaming in protest. 

“Romelle!” 

She shook her head, blonde hair flying wildly around her. “No time! Lion wouldn’t take, going back to the bridge!” And then she was gone before Keith could untangle the breathless sentence she’d yelled at them. 

Pidge punched ineffectively at his shoulder, again, and this time he let her feet touch the floor. 

“She said Yellow wouldn’t wake up. Now come on, stop stalling and get me to Gr-” Pidge’s voice cut off with a quiet inhale. Keith’s head snapped back up and sucked a breath through his teeth. 

‘ _Largely in disrepair’_ had been putting it fucking _lightly_. Containers were scattered all over the place, a few lucky ones just overturned but most of them melted into slag or crushed irreparably. Huge claw marks rent the walls, panels falling or prised apart with wires sparking or dangling out like spilled innards across the massive landing bay. 

(He’d never thought about why they had more than one shuttle bay in the Castle before but he was glad, now, that he’d landed the pod elsewhere. He couldn’t be sure when this happened, but the odds were good that none of them, pod included, would have survived whatever had happened here.) 

Three of the five walls of the Lion’s ‘pens’ were just gone. Battered down, cracked open, rended apart. The one that should have separated Red and Black looked like it’d been melted most of the way there. From repeated plasma blasts or Red’s flamethrower he had no idea.

“What the-”

The Lions weren’t in much better condition. 

Yellow was on the far edge and even they had a flank coated in what looked like soot. The lion was hunkered low, tail wrapped around it’s back legs, looking every inch like it was seconds away from dropping it’s particle barrier. It was a weird look for the second largest lion of Voltron to sport and the sight of it did nothing to calm the acid chewing away at him. 

Blue was gone. Out with Allura providing them these heady seconds of peace by drawing fire. 

(They wouldn’t be able to hold it for long. Allura’s inexperience flying and Blue’s jack-of-all-trades nature not a great solo match up against the General’s assault. 

Keith hoped they had started off less damaged than the other two.)

Red and Black were heaped together. The smallest lion pinned, belly up, under Black’s considerable mass. It would have looked worse for the Red Lion if Black wasn’t sporting long claw marks across his throat and carbon scoring just about everywhere else. 

Red had taken more than just their tail canon to the head of Voltron. There wasn’t an inch Keith could see of Black that hadn’t been shot, scraped, or blasted in some way or another. 

It almost looked less like Black had pinned Voltron’s sword and more like the largest lion had simply collapsed over top of her**. 

Neither lion looked operable. 

“Get me to Green.” Pidge’s voice shook, sounding as unsettled as he felt. 

Keith yanked her back up and began the careful process of picking a path through the carnage, edging past the bulk of the downed lions. 

Green, thankfully, seemed fine. They were curled in the far corner of their intact bay, sheltering under their shell-like shield. Yellow eyes flickered to life as Keith and Pidge approached. 

“Alright Kitty Rose! Let’s-” Pidge cut off with a yelp, right in Keith’s ear, as Wolf flashed into existence between them and the lowering bridge. “ _Did your dog just teleport?_ ” 

Keith winced and leaned as far away from Pidge as he could without dropping her. “He’s a wolf and- Hey!” 

Pidge shoved him away with an open palm, leaning down alarmingly quick to peer at Wolf. “How does he do that? Why can he do that? Is it teleportation or temporal displacement? Can he-”

Oh, great. He sighed and started up the ramp. Head wounds made her _chatty_. She sounded almost like, “Lance.”

Pidge’s head swiveled around like a possessed child in a horror flick. “What?”

He hadn't meant to say that outloud. In for a penny though, “I said you sound like Lance.”

The shoving resumed. “You take that back!” 

“I can still drop-”

The castle rocked again, violently. Keith grunted as it slammed him against the wall of Green’s mouth, glad they’d made it that far up the ramp. Wolf whined, a high and sharp noise amid the low toned sirens. Keith kicked off the wall and ran. 

(He did drop her into the chair though.) 

* * *

Keith scowled and shook his hands out pointedly. “Nice warning.”

“Oh, _sorry_ , were you not ready?” 

“You- _left!_ ” 

They swerved left wildly, spinning upside down for an alarming moment, to avoid the weirdest looking ship Keith had seen. It shot past them, froze impossibly mid-lurch, and then the engines spun around the torpedo hull of it to launch it, presumably _backwards_ , towards them once more.   
  


“How does that even _work_?” 

Pidge shrugged and slammed the controls again. 

Keith itched. He clenched and unclenched the death grip he had on the headrest, doing his best to bite back the advice building up behind his teeth. Green was built different than Red, different than Black. Just because he thought he knew- 

The probably-flying-in-reverse machine buzzed them, Pidge barely yanking Green out of the way of their strafe. They _didn’t_ dodge the rapid fire torpedoes, each consecutive hit ( _one, two, three, four, five_ \- one for each Lion) jarring them further and further out of control. Green’s tail cannon lit up, arching overhead to return fire. 

_Miss._ _Miss. Miss_.

The engines reversed again, the craft rocketing towards them once more.

One shot over it’s left engine. Another scraping past it’s belly.

“Just hit it already!”

“I’m _trying!_ ”

“Try harder!”

“Hey! Not all of us were _pilots!_ ”  
  


  
“What does that-”

“If you two are _quite finished_ ,” Allura’s peeved voice rang through the comms. “Perhaps we could try to think up a strategy?!” 

Keith and Pidge exchanged slightly chagrined glances. 

“Uh, right.” 

“Sorry.” 

They fell into an uneasy silence, buffered by the grunts of frustration and the soundless flashes of plasma weapons across the darkness of space. 

“Well?”

Pidge opened her mouth to retort back, she didn’t hear the princess coming up with anything and she’d been out here longer than they had, only to jump as Keith leaned into her line of sight. 

“Hey!”

He ignored her, staring intently out the view screen at the two ships now attempting to flank them. 

“Pidge, try and pull up near one of them.” 

The Green Paladin grunted and forced Green into a dive at the last second, wincing as what looked like crackling electricity sprung to life between one of the craft’s crab-like extensions, where the center of Green’s mass had just been. “Which one?” 

“Doesn’t matter, just pick one and go for it!”

Pidge leaned on the controls and, for the first time since they’d launched through the barrier, charged headfirst towards the nearest ship. Honestly, they were lucky Green’s carapace was tough. They weren’t the Shield of Voltron for nothing but this- 

They closed in on the other ship _fast_. 

“Okay, full plan, any time now!”

Silence. 

“Keith?!”

The older, _much_ older and they _still_ hadn’t addressed that, paladin braced himself into a kneeled crouch next the not-a-dog, galran blade activated and sharp and way, way, too close to her legs give how unsteady this ride had been. 

“What are you doing?” Pidge tried not to shriek, hands tight on the controls as she was forced to swerve off path to avoid a direct hit. 

Keith tightened his fingers over Wolf’s ruff, swallowing down preemptive nausea. He knew worse was soon to come. He hated long distance teleports. 

“Probably something stupid.” 

“What does that even mean?”

Silence. 

“Keith?”

Pidge carefully glanced to the side and was met with empty floor. 

“...Keith?” 

Nothing. 

  
“ _Idiot!_ He doesn’t even have a communicator!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Keith in canon hasn’t named the Cosmic Wolf. He’s “waiting” to do so - the team in canon later named him Cosmo but that hasn’t happened yet. If you think reading ‘Wolf’ as a name feels awkward you have no idea how bizarre it was to write. 
> 
> **Keith and Lance use different genders to address/for the Lions and I HC that all the paladins actually do and have no idea they’re doing so.  
> Keith in particular uses female pronouns for the Red Lion and male pronouns for the Black lion.  
> Lance, however, uses male pronouns for the Red Lion but uses female pronouns for the Blue Lion (which we don’t see Allura emulate but she doesn’t use pronouns for the Lions at all). 
> 
> Speaking of pronouns - while I personally HC'd that Pidge was NB (they/them pronouns) for a long time... the show actually does confirm her gender and uses female pronouns for Pidge so... yeah. Also, Keith's canon POV is that Pidge has stated that they're "a girl" and so he uses female pronouns for Pidge. 
> 
> Also for the combat scene with Green,  
> Please remember that Pidge is flying in a three dimensional space, without a seatbelt, through live fire, with the remains of a serious head injury. She was not fully healed (as disclosed earlier) and is struggling with a whole slew of nasty side-effects very reminiscent of Post-Concussion syndrome. Additionally, as she states, she wasn’t a pilot and was never trained for these types of scenarios. Keith contests this because, honestly, the Garrison didn’t train him for anything like this and the Lions are incredibly different to pilot besides - but Pidge has a solid point under the whole ‘I never signed up to be in this particular brand of bullshit’ category because Keith, Shiro, and presumably Lance, all at least had the vague notion that they might one day have to pilot under heavy fire or the natural equivalent (like an asteroid field etc).
> 
> Also, yes, I am once again experimenting with tonal shifts and narrative styles. Keith and Lance (and the others who'll poke their heads in as we go on) experience the world differently from one another. Lance's POV won't always be as frantic as chapter one because he came out for a heart to heart but was honestly being attacked right then.


End file.
